Short-Term Psychosocial Treatment Prevents Suicide in High-Risk Patients

Few large studies have examined the preventive effects of treatment in suicide attempters, the group at highest risk for future suicide. Researchers evaluated such treatment by analyzing data from the Danish national suicide registry on people with deliberate self-harm from 1992 through 2010 who had or had not received brief (8–10 sessions) outpatient psychosocial interventions for suicide prevention.

There were 17,034 people who did not receive psychosocial treatment and who were propensity-score–matched to 5678 people who did receive treatment. In the first year after self-harm, receiving treatment was associated with lower risks for subsequent self-harm (odds ratio, 0.73) and death from any cause (OR, 0.62). Over 20 years, risks with trea…